


Pirouette

by Belphegor



Series: One-Step, Two-Step, Waltz [1]
Category: Original Work, The Mummy Series
Genre: 1910s, Asexuality Spectrum, Bisexual Disasters, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Period-Typical Racism, Rated explicit just to be safe, Rating Goes Up On the Third Chapter, let's be real this is 99 per cent OCs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:36:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24628672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belphegor/pseuds/Belphegor
Summary: The treacherous waters of 1910s Oxford can be hard to navigate on your own. Fortunately, it’s a lot easier with a friend. Featuring upper-class twits, a pub brawl, an inadvertent tumble into the Thames, and more generally a couple of misfits finding they enjoy each other’s company.
Relationships: Jonathan Carnahan/Original Male Character
Series: One-Step, Two-Step, Waltz [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1780654
Comments: 43
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So. *twiddles fingers* Here I am, making my own little contribution to the “canon character/OC” romance pool, except it’s not canon-era Ardeth/OFC (which I’ve read _great_ fics about) but pre-canon Jonathan/OMC and later becomes Jonathan/OMC/OFC. Like, over a decade before canon (1913, to be exact). I almost didn’t tag “The Mummy Series” for that reason. I have no idea who will even want to read this, but if you do and are kind enough to tell me you did, I will probably love you until the world ends. Because I’ve had _so much feelings_ about the two idiots depicted below (and the later addition of Elizabeth) that not only I’ve been writing something like 70k words so far about this series, but also it got me writing smut for the first time in my 38 years of existence for some reason. So, if you’ve read _Fairy Tales and Hokum_ and wondered what might have happened between Jonathan, Tom, and Elizabeth – or if you haven’t read it at all and just like the idea of 18-year-old Jon being a bit of a disaster bi – kick off your shoes and welcome!
> 
> Anyway. Shutting up now.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Oxford in October – The patrons of the Turf Tavern – The fate of a perfect cup of tea – Making friends_

When Tommy Ferguson arrives in Oxford in mid-September, a little before the start of freshers’ week, he has no idea what to expect.

He knows the classes he will attend, where he will live – first-years are housed on site, he has a room of his own in halls with a bed, a desk, and a sink with hot water – and that’s about it. He knows literally nobody. For a Scouser who spent most of his life in Kirkdale and never ventured further south than Vauxhall, this is an enormous change.

The buildings are different, the people are different. Gone are the small red bricks and terraced houses he grew up with; instead, Tommy is surrounded by light-coloured stone and classical architecture. From the cuts of men’s suits and the cloths of women’s dresses, people are generally well-to-do, and the accents are posher than anything he’s ever heard.

He’ll have to leave his Liverpool accent behind as much as he can. It’s hard to miss the way some people stare at him or snigger every time he opens his mouth. He can almost hear his mother’s voice in his head, telling him he shouldn’t have to, but still he works hard not to drop any ‘h’ and make his ‘o’s a little flatter, a little wider. He stills forgets to pronounce some of the ‘g’s at the end of words like ‘evening’, though, and he suspects that’s fighting a losing battle.

But then if Tommy had picked his battles more carefully, right now he’d be behind a desk in Bootle or working on a shipyard, not in bloody Oxford about to study ancient history like he’s always dreamed of.

Eventually, he manages to find a part-time job as a waiter at the Turf Tavern, a little pub hidden in a maze of tiny streets not five minutes from his college. The publican, one Sam Taylor – a big man, taller and even larger than Tommy, with a broad Black Country accent – explains he’ll mostly work mornings or evenings, and should never hesitate to throw out anyone who makes trouble.

“Right,” he says once he finishes showing Tommy the beer taps and the liquor bottles, “that should about do it. Just remember to clean everything after closing time and never serve a pint that’s not been paid for.”

Tommy nods and makes to thank him when he’s interrupted by a sound like glass shattering somewhere in one of the pub’s many nooks.

The pub only opens in an hour. He and Taylor are alone. What the—?

“That’s nothing,” says Taylor, quite unfazed. “Just Old Rosie. Our resident ghost. She breaks glass sometimes when she’s feelin’ sad.”

Tommy stares at him a long time, wondering what sort of loony bin he’s landed into. Then he shrugs it off and goes to get a dustpan and a brush, because he has a feeling that ‘Old Rosie’ isn’t going to clean up after herself.

He’s right.

* * *

When freshers’ week starts, Tommy has been working for a week and every single glass has remained whole – neither him or Rosie broke any. Which makes Taylor decidedly happy.

“It means she likes ye.”

Tommy is perhaps more glad to hear that than he should. Most of his fellow first-years either ignore him or steal sly glances at him so far, and he’s caught the words “…in a _pub_ , old boy, how dreadfully distasteful” a fair few times. At mealtimes he tends to sit with Arthur McAllister, a gangly lad who has Ancient Greek with him and is genial enough despite a tendency to bring books at the table and get lost in them. If he looks a little puzzled when Tommy asks him “Fancy a bevvy?” on his evenings off and generally refuses on account of having work to do, at least he’s polite about it and never makes Tommy feel like he’s lesser, somehow.

After a while, Tommy decides to concentrate on studying and bartending, because it’s obvious he’s not here to make the kind of friends he left behind in Liverpool. Arthur is a decent lad, but too absent-minded and immersed in medieval literature to be more than absently friendly, and the rest of his classmates don’t seem that intent on being pally with him. At best, they’re too polite to be inquisitive; at worst, they look down their noses at him and sneer, especially when they come to the Turf for drinks and find him behind the bar, cleaning glasses and serving pints.

There’s always something that tightens in Tommy’s stomach when _these_ kinds of customers come into the pub. He meets their smirks with a determined smile that feels like it’s etched into his mouth with a knife, and wonders if he’s going to make it through three years of this without giving in to the temptation to break a bottle over somebody’s head.

And then, one day, Edwin Farbow comes in with his mates, and instead of settling in a nook like they usually do, they stay at the bar, turn their backs on him, and talk. Loudly, so Tommy can hear.

At first, he manages to ignore them just fine. For all that they’re loud, and there’s five of them – Percy Barkley, Jack ‘Wicker’ Whickham, Francis ‘Bicky’ Bickersdyke, Charles ‘Fanny’ Featherstonehaugh1, and Farbow himself – he has enough to do behind the bar to shut out their conversation. Besides, most of them ordered soft drinks, because the afternoon has barely started fading into evening, but Farbow asked for a tea, and the kettle coming to a boil is enough to drown most of what they’re saying.

Tommy’s shift ends in about twenty minutes, and Taylor is often early. He can put up with five inbred twits with too much money and too little chin for twenty minutes.

“…was saying, Fanny, one can’t expect the impossible. A leopard cannot change its spots, what?”

“Of course, old thing, of course. One doesn’t go against nature.”

“Yet some unfortunate souls try, and try again, only to be met with inevitable failure. There’s something almost sublime in their struggling – just look at Sisyphus. You see, they _know_ , deep down, that they are lacking, shall I say, intrinsically. Some even know what they are lacking. Yet they persist until they finally have no choice but to capitulate. It might be noble if it wasn’t quite so dumb.”

It just so happens that Tommy catches Farbow’s eye just as he says this. The last word comes after a very short pause, with an accompanying smirk that says Farbow is throwing all pretence at subtlety out the window.

Tommy hates fighting. He’s thrown a few punches in his time, but he’s rubbish at it. He’s better at rolling with the blows, dodging or taking them until the opponent is tired, and then walking away without having suffered much more than a bruised ego. This kind of fight, though, is completely different. It’s not even the sort of verbal wrestling he grew up with back home, where you can utterly destroy someone else if your jokes are sharp enough, and where witticisms can make a lad surrender like he might after getting knocked off his feet. Not that Tommy was very good at that either; he often seems to know what to retort to someone only an hour or so later. No, the problem with Edwin Farbow’s style of – for lack of a better term – verbal warfare is that it all sounds so cultured and distinguished that it makes _you_ the impolite one for acknowledging that it is in fact bloody rude, or worse, for protesting.

He resists the urge to glance at the clock again and goes to check on the tea’s temperature when he hears another voice counter Farbow’s.

“Now you see, old bean, I don’t quite agree with that last statement. Poor old Sisyphus’ plight might be worth a tragedy or two, but in cases like yours, trying and failing and trying again is not noble at all – just bally stupid.”

Farbow’s head – and Tommy’s – swivels to the nook closest to the bar. There’s a skinny dark-haired lad in there, seated at the tiny table like he was poured onto his chair, his nose in a yellowback2. On the table there’s the glass of soda he ordered earlier, now empty, and a game of patience he visibly abandoned a while ago for his novel.

He looks familiar, and Tommy racks his brain until he remembers he’s a first year undergraduate, like him. They both read ancient history and have several classes in common, and the Turf appears to be one of his favourite boozers.

Farbow gives him a supercilious look.

“What do you mean by ‘cases like mine’, pray tell?” he asks, voice dripping with scorn. It’s not unlike the tone he uses to talk to Tommy, really.

The lad squints at him over his book and smirks.

“I mean the way you and your chums waste time and saliva trying to get a rise out of people who obviously have better things to do than talking to the likes of you. Good God, if you’re _th_ _is_ bored, go see a play or something.” The smirk falls. “Or a cricket match.”

“Are you really still on about that, Carnahan?” Farbow sneers, and the name kindles something in Tommy’s memory. Mostly warnings from other students. It appears young Carnahan doesn’t have a very good reputation.

Then again, neither does Tommy, so he decides to wait and see before drawing his own conclusions.

Carnahan puts down his novel and shoots Farbow a deadpan look. His eyes are narrow, almost slanted, making his stare rather effective.

“Seventeen pounds, Farbow. That’s seventeen pounds you still owe me. So yes, I am ‘still on about that’.”

“Pish,” says Farbow, as if seventeen pounds isn’t a bloody fortune. “You sound like a shopkeeper. I’m sure even his kind –” he says this with a jerk of his chin towards Tommy, who has to keep his hands flat against the bar to keep them from balling up into fists “– is aware that a true gentleman knows better than to bring up a subject as distasteful as _money_.”

“Wouldn’t that require Carnahan to be a gentleman, though?” asks Bicky, to general amusement. Farbow raises a lazy hand, as if to wave away the idea.

“The very thought. Look, for the last time, I wasn’t serious about that bet –”

“Not the way you might’ve been if you’d won, correct?”

Farbow ignores Carnahan’s interruption.

“And anyway, I did pay you –”

“Three measly pounds! Out of twenty!”

“Will you stop!?” Farbow snaps. “You should be glad I even consented to part with them! For God’s sake, this kind of attitude I would expect from _his_ lot, but not from—”

It’s the way he says ‘ _his_ lot’. Somehow, it’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Tommy pounds a fist on the bar, making all five lads jump and turn to him, and says in a voice he’s fighting hard to keep even, “Right, that’s it. What is your problem with me?”

Farbow’s gaze skims over him like he’s barely even worth a glance.

“I don’t have a ‘problem’ with you, Ferguson.”

“Like ‘ell you don’t. Do you really think I don’t know what you mean with your Sisyphus rubbish? Is my bein’ ‘ere somehow offensive to you?”

“If you really want to know, _yes_ ,” Farbow snarls. Gone is the usual cool and collected façade; the sophisticated polish is well and truly cracking. “I tried to make it obvious to you, hoping you might be smart enough to come to the right conclusions by yourself – as unlikely as it sounds – and bloody well go back to whatever hole you crawled out from, but since it appears you need someone to spell it out for you…”

He takes a deep breath and continues in the same tart voice, “Oxford is a centuries-old institution, the cradle of the next generation of leaders, and plebs like you _do not_ belong here. It’s bad enough they let in people like Carnahan, who only exists because a glorified grave-robber shagged some darkey and didn’t even have the decency to pretend otherwise –”

From the corner of his eye, and despite mounting fury making his heart hammer in his chest, Tommy sees Carnahan go utterly still.

“– But at least his father comes from a moderately respectable family. Where do _you_ even come from?”

 _Bedford Road, Liverpool_ , says a voice in Tommy’s head that sounds a lot like his own, only prouder and much cheekier. He doesn’t trust himself to speak, though, so he doesn’t answer the question. His accent speaks for himself anyway, geographically speaking. Besides, Farbow obviously wasn’t waiting for a reply.

“…gutter, never thought I’d see the day they let in scum like you. I bet you’re not even English, everybody knows it’s all Irish trash and half-Irish mongrels up there—”

Tommy’s dad was Scottish, but his mam is from Kerry. He has uncles, aunts, and cousins on both sides of the Irish sea who speak two languages and often struggle with English. The Great Hunger killed his great-grandparents and two of his great-aunts3.

Farbow still hasn’t finished with his diatribe, but Tommy can no longer hear him. The world has gone silent and slow-moving. Like an automaton, his fingers find the teacup Farbow ordered earlier and pick it up. The temperature is just right, like the amount of milk and sugar. It’s a perfect cup of tea.

Finally Farbow runs out of steam; he straightens up, tightens his tie against his collar, and says, “So you see, it’s not _you_ I have a problem with, personally. More what your presence signifies, if you get my meaning. Thank you for the tea.”

“Póg mo thóin4,” says Tommy, and he upends the cup on Farbow’s head.

Farbow screams, Barkley lunges at Tommy, and all hell breaks loose.

Fanny is six foot one with shoulders as large as Tommy’s, Wicker is two heads smaller than him but his fists seem to be everywhere, and the other three run the gamut between the two extremes. In-between the giving and receiving of wallops Tommy has enough presence of mind to do two things: move the fight away from the bar and the bottles and glasses on the counter, and reflect that the odds are not in his favour at all. Farbow he probably could have taken on by himself, but five against one? _Not_ a good idea. Still, Tommy threw the first punch; he started this, he is bloody well finishing it.

The way things are going, it’s likely ‘finishing’ will mean getting his skull kicked in, but at least he will have knocked Farbow’s smug grin off his face for a while.

Tommy’s fist collides with someone’s mouth, and he feels a tooth or two give in. When he draws back his hand, his knuckles are bleeding like he’s been bitten. He doesn’t have time to feel the pain, though, because a blow from behind strikes him right in the kidneys, sending a sharp spike of agony throughout his entire body. Everything goes white and he drops to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

Dimly, as though it’s happening to someone else, he sees Bicky draw back his foot for a kick aimed for his stomach – but the pain Tommy was expecting never comes. Instead, Bicky stumbles back with a startled yelp. The next moment, there is a flat meaty sound and Wicker trips over Tommy’s legs.

Tommy pushes himself off the floor and clambers up, only to find himself shoulder to shoulder with Carnahan. Who grins crookedly, lightning-quick.

“Hullo there, old chap. Thought I might even the odds a little.”

Why on earth an almost perfect stranger suddenly decided to help him, Tommy has no idea, but he’s not about to turn him down. His side is still hurting; his jaw is stinging from a glancing blow he failed to dodge early on, which made him bite his tongue and taste blood. So he watches as Carnahan puts up his fists and says, in a voice that sounds a little too excited to be as offhand as he probably intends it to be, “Come on, Farbow, how about we settle this like gentlemen, eh? Queensberry rules, seventeen pounds to the victor?”

“Oh, do fuck off,” says Farbow in a proper upper-class drawl, and with a nasty-looking uppercut he hits Carnahan in the pit of the stomach before decking him with a left hook.

They both go down pretty fast after that. Two against five may be slightly better than one against five, but not by much, and soon Tommy is curled up on himself, doing his best to somehow protect his head and his stomach at the same time.

Just when he thinks getting beaten up by a bunch of upper-class twits in what amounts to his own pub has to be one of the most stupid ways to die, a new voice joins the din, roaring and swearing the air blue. The blows, miraculously, stop.

When Tommy opens one eye (he’s not sure he’ll be able to see out of the other if he opens it), he and Carnahan are both prone, noses against the dusty wood floor, while Sam Taylor is standing between them and Farbow’s gang with a cricket bat in one hand and Fanny’s ear in the other, his face stormy.

“This,” he snarls, somehow gesturing to the entire pub with the hand that still grips Fanny’s ear, making Fanny whimper, “is a respectable establishment, and I will _not_ have patrons brawling on the floor like a bunch of scrammels5, d’you understand? If you want to fight, you take it outside. And if you want to _really_ fight, you fight one on one, not five on two, you bleeding cowards—”

“Could you let go of my ear now, please?” comes Fanny’s voice, much higher than usual.

“Shut your row up, I ain’t done talking!”

Actually, it sounds more like “ _Shutyarowup, I ayn done tekkin_ ”, and Tommy sees Carnahan’s almost slanted eyes go a little round. Presumably he’s never heard proper Black Country dialect before. He has a big bruise on his forehead and a cut on his cheekbone, and he looks just as sore and confused to still be in one piece, relatively speaking, as Tommy is feeling.

Taylor has dragged Fanny all the way to the door and herded the other four in the same direction with his bat, still hollering at them, and finishes with “And if you ever so much as darken this doorstep again, so help me God I will make good use of this bat, you hear?”

Being banned from a pub is no laughing matter. By the end of the week all of Oxford will know that Edwin Farbow and his friends were kicked out of the Turf Tavern for brawling. Tommy just hopes against hope the rumour will leave out the reason for the brawl. He’s not looking forward to being ‘the bloke who got Edwin Farbow kicked out of the Turf’ and ‘the bloke who got beat up by Edwin Farbow and his mates’ on top of being ‘the bloke whose family can’t even pay for his studies’.

The only consolation is a glance he manages to steal at the five before Taylor closes the door after them. They look like the fight wasn’t _that_ one-sided after all.

Other patrons must be gawking, or looking curious at the very least, because Tommy hears his boss bark “Show’s over, people!” before being gingerly helped to his feet.

“All right, lad?” Taylor asks roughly.

Tommy takes stock of what hurts, what aches and what stings, and compares it to the worst experiences he’s had so far. He didn’t black out and he doesn’t feel sick, so that’s a good start. He can actually see out of his left eye, even though the skin around it feels swollen and painful, and none of his teeth appears to have got knocked out. His mouth is full of blood he doesn’t dare to either swallow or spit out, so he only answers Taylor’s question with a nod.

His unexpected would-be rescuer doesn’t seem to fare much worse – or better, depending on your point of view. The bruise on the side of his forehead looks like some exotic flower, all tinges of red and purple sprawling over to his temple; his cheek and his lower lip are bleeding and the way he stands makes it obvious he’s hurting in more or less the same places Tommy is. But there is something on his face at odds with the drubbing they’ve just received, a quiet grin that makes his eyes gleam. Like he’s the one who won, somehow.

Taylor tows them both towards the basement, where he stores kegs and barrels, and comes back with a basin of water, a cloth, and what Tommy recognises as a bottle of disinfectant.

“Work in a pub long enough, you’ll find there are things you can’t do without,” Taylor says when he catches Tommy’s surprised glance. Then he takes another look at him. “Need to spit, do you? Hold on.”

He disappears and comes back with another basin, and Tommy can finally get rid of the disgusting mouthful of blood and saliva. Once he’s done, Taylor looks at him and Carnahan critically and folds his arms across his ample chest.

“Right,” he says. “Who started it?”

Tommy – certain he’s lost his job and will probably get expelled from his college – meets his gaze steadily, figuring he might as well go out with dignity.

“I threw the first punch, Mr Taylor.”

“That ain’t what I asked, is it? Who _started_ it?”

“Words were said, sir,” says Carnahan, wincing a little as he opens and closes his fingers. “He did a splendid job of ignoring them until those chaps you threw out got personal. The ugly sort of personal, if you get my meaning.”

“Think I do,” mutters Taylor. “Look, lad…”

“I know, I should never ‘ave let them rile me and lost me temper. I’m sorry for the trouble I caused you.” Might as well say ‘sorry’ for what he really is sorry for. Walloping Farbow and his ilk? _That_ he will never regret.

Taylor looks at him, then at Carnahan, then back at him, and sighs.

“I’ll sort things out upstairs,” he says in a voice that suggests he really wants to say something else. “You two clean yourselves up, and when you’re done you can go home.”

Tommy nods dully. They were supposed to take some time before the end of his shift to go over the books. It’s the ideal hour, just before the rush of the evening. Now Taylor will have to find someone else to train.

“Don’t bother coming in tomorrow morning, all right? I’ll see you the day after tomorrow in the evening.”

The implications sink in. Tommy raises his head, sudden hope rising in his chest.

“You’re not firin’ me?”

“No, lad, I’m not firing you. But next time, _before_ you throw a punch, remember you have full authority to throw troublemakers out on their ear, and I don’t just mean the ones who get so pissed they can’t walk straight, all right?”

Despite the bruises, Tommy beams. He can’t help it. Taylor makes to clap him on the shoulder, but – thankfully, probably in deference to the fact that Tommy just got essentially beaten to a pulp – thinks better of it and goes back up the stairs to the pub.

There is a hiss behind him, and he turns to see Carnahan run a wet cloth over his knuckles. The skin there has been scraped off in a few places.

What Tommy wants to say is “Thank you for helping me”. For some reason probably having to do with Carnahan having roughly the same accent Edwin Farbow has, what actually leaves his mouth is, “Why did you ‘elp me?”

Carnahan raises his head, looking surprised. Then he tilts his head to the side.

“Um. I’m a very generous person?”

“Is that supposed to be a question?” Tommy asks, a grin pulling at his lips in spite of himself. Carnahan smiles.

“That depends. Does it sound plausible?”

“Not really. Do you mind—?”

Tommy gestures to the dripping cloth, which Carnahan hands to him before picking up the disinfectant bottle.

“So,” he continues, because this is as good a diversion as it gets while he rinses the blood off his own bleeding knuckles, “is that a thing you do on a regular basis?”

“What?”

“Throw yourself into a fight to help a perfect stranger.”

“A perfect stranger? God, no. Perish the thought. I value my life, thank you.” They swap the cloth for the bottle. “A good publican is hard to find, though, so I thought I might give you a hand. Besides,” Carnahan adds a little more seriously, “considering what happens when Farbow starts to speak, it was inevitable that someone would belt him a good one across the mouth one day. We just happened to be in the right place at the right time.” He dabs the cloth against his cheekbone and hisses again. “Or the wrong one, depending on how you look at it.”

Farbow said a lot of things that would earn him more than a good one across the mouth. Since most of what he said about Tommy’s ancestry, character, and general environment makes Tommy’s blood go from a steady simmer to a boil, it feels safer to focus on something else. Like his enigmatic derogatory remark about Carnahan’s own family.

What did he mean?

Tommy isn’t about to be so blunt as to ask, so he says quietly, forcing the anger back down where it usually sleeps undisturbed, “Me mother’s Irish.”

Carnahan’s hands still. Tommy is certain he heard all the rubbish Farbow spouted, even after fury overwhelmed Tommy’s brain and shut out all sound. It’s actually a fairly faithful reflection of general English opinion about Irish people in general, if a little more heated than what it usually comes out as.

Their eyes meet, unsure, like careful footsteps treading treacherous ground.

“My mother is Egyptian,” says Carnahan, slightly uncertain and with a sort of faint defiance, like he’s daring Tommy to be Farbow-like about it.

So _that’s_ what Farbow meant. Tommy would never have guessed to look at him. The lad in front of him has a narrow face, nose and mouth, brown hair that curls a little, and his long, almost slanted eyes are a light blue. His skin might be a little more tanned than Tommy’s, but that hardly means anything – Tommy’s skin has two settings, very white and very red. Anything in-between only depends on how much his freckles show or not.

He doesn’t look very Egyptian. What he does look, however, is nervous.

Tommy switches the bottle to his left hand and extends his right with a smile.

“I’m Thomas Ferguson.”

“I know,” Carnahan blurts out. “We have classes together.”

He takes Tommy’s hand and shakes it. His hand is warm, with long slender fingers.

“Jonathan Carnahan. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Same ‘ere,” says Tommy, still smiling. “Thank you for helpin’ me back there.”

Jonathan lets go of his hand and makes a dismissive gesture. “Think nothing of it. Besides, believe it or not, my intentions weren’t entirely altruistic.”

Tommy snorts. “No, really?”

“I said ‘not entirely’. I wasn’t joking about good publicans being hard to find.”

“I’m not the publican,” Tommy points out, “Taylor is.”

“Maybe, but you’re a lot less scary than he is. Besides, five wankers against one bartender, moreover one I know is a decent fellow? Not cricket, old chap. Not cricket at all.”

Jonathan sounds sincere enough, but Tommy is still curious.

“So what were your intentions then, apart from ‘evening the odds’?”

Jonathan’s slight smirk, the one he gave Farbow earlier, is back on his face. Somehow it still feels directed at Farbow though, not at Tommy.

“Settling a debt.” He tries to fix the creases in his jacket – a losing battle, since their clothes are rumpled, somewhat bloodied, and covered in dust and bootprints, and will probably cost a fortune to have laundered – and straightens up. “Since you have tomorrow off, do you fancy a pint somewhere? Not here, obviously, wouldn’t be a proper day off otherwise.”

Tommy hasn’t shared a real evening in a pub with anyone since he left Liverpool. It’s one of the things he’s missed the most, that straightforward, comfortable kind of companionship that comes with a pint of beer and a bowl of peanuts for two.

Just when he’s about to accept enthusiastically, he remembers the state of his finances and the fact that pay only comes in next week.

“I can’t,” he says, making an effort not to sound miserable. It’s not really working. Having to admit that he can’t even afford one bloody pint is humiliating. “I’m flat broke.”

“Oh but that won’t be a problem. It’ll be Farbow’s treat.”

Tommy raises his eyes from his red and swollen knuckles to Jonathan, puzzled by the almost absolute seriousness of his tone. Almost. His eyes are twinkling.

He’s holding a wallet in his hands. One swift gesture later, he’s holding three wallets.

“Or Fanny’s, if you prefer. Hey, did you know that Bicky’s middle name is ‘Meredith’?”

Tommy’s jaw drops open.

“Did you… Did you steal those?”

“I did,” says Jonathan with an utterly unrepentant grin. “I told you I wasn’t being entirely altruistic.”

“While they beat you up?”

Jonathan shrugs. “It’s a talent.”

Well. At least it explains Jonathan’s unsavoury reputation. _Some talent_ , says the law-abiding part of Tommy’s conscience. The rest of him is moving past from shock to delight and resolutely ignoring this part. If it’d been anyone else, he probably would have had qualms, but since it’s Farbow and his gang…

“How much is there?”

“Enough for… oh, at least two or three months worth of pints. Every night, if we were so inclined.”

It’s the ridiculous grin on Jonathan’s face that does it. Tommy bursts out laughing. The next moment, Jonathan laughs, as well.

* * *

Despite the bruises, despite the scrapes and the scratches, and despite the fact that Edwin Farbow’s eyes promise death each time they come across each other in the corridors, Tommy’s good mood feels unsinkable the next day. Jonathan’s ill-acquired windfall – the loot, they should say – is quite enough to cover the cleaner’s expense, which Tommy was somewhat anxious about; indeed, they still have enough for a pub crawl through the entirety of Oxfordshire. Twice, at least.

They sit together in Ancient Egypt and Latin, to Tommy’s relief, because he half-expected Jonathan to ignore him once normality settled in again. But no; for some reason Jonathan seems to enjoy his company just as much as Tommy is starting to enjoy his.

After dinner in the hall with everyone, Tommy turns to Jonathan and says, “Pub?”

As usual, it comes out as ‘poob’, because as hard as Tommy tries to soften his accent, some words will always betray him.

And Jonathan doesn’t mock his pronunciation, doesn’t smirk at all as he nods and says, “Pub.”

They spend the evening drinking, laughing, and complaining and commiserating about this and that teacher or class, only staggering back into the night at closing time. Tommy isn’t quite as hammered as he might have let himself get back home, but he’s past mildly intoxicated and well into sozzled, so when they find themselves out in the street he grabs Jonathan’s arm and wishes the world would stop spinning, at least until they make it home.

Unfortunately, Jonathan is in the same state he is, or close, and his arm is about as stable as the rest of him. Which is not a lot.

“’S windy down ‘ere,” Tommy says. Jonathan blinks at him.

“What?”

“’S what me dad used to say. When. Er. When ‘e saw a drunk walk past. It’s windy!” he crows, quite happy to finally get all the syllables right. A sleepy, angry noise of protest comes from behind the shutters of one of the houses they’re walking past.

Jonathan licks his finger and lifts it, looking dead serious.

“No wind at all,” he states. Tommy makes a large gesture.

“Nononono. Not like that. It’s a wossname – metaphor.”

“Ooh, _right_. I say, what’s your dad d—do again?”

“Sailor,” says Tommy, and then, because some things are powerful enough to pierce through even the warm daze of lager, he adds in the same tone but with lower volume, “Dead. Drowned.”

Jonathan stops in his tracks and stares at him, looking stricken.

“Oh, good Heavens. I am so sorry, old chap.”

“’S all right, mate. Worse things happen at sea, right? Except… Except, uh.” Tommy blinks and takes a sharp intake of breath. The old sorrow usually lurks in the bottom of his heart and isn’t quite so sharp, but right now it feels like it’s turned into a huge brick wall he’s just smacked right into. “Well, it happened at sea.”

Dammit. He did _not_ drink himself stupid to get maudlin.

Jonathan’s grip on his arm tightens. Tommy can’t tell if it’s in sympathy or because he’s a little too plastered to put one foot in front of the other properly. The touch feels nice, though. It’s like a warm anchor to reality, if a little wobbly.

Tommy misses Liverpool so badly it feels like a dull ache, there in the pit of his stomach. He misses his family, he misses his friends, he misses all the tiny things that made his city home in ways he only really recognised after he left it. The homesickness isn’t usually this strong, but the combination of alcohol and the memory of grief has opened all the locks and let everything else flood in.

He takes a long, shaky breath and a long look all around him, at the foreign buildings made of light stone bricks, this town that feels aloof and sleepy but that he’s starting to genuinely like almost despite himself, even when it makes him feel like an outlier at best, a fraud and a stowaway at worst.

Because he’s three sheets to the wind, and because he’s far from home and fed up with being surrounded by people and buildings that seem determined to make him ashamed of who and what he is, Tommy opens his mouth and lets out the first thing that comes to his mind.

 _Farewell to Prince’s Landing Stage  
_ _River Mersey, fare thee well  
_ _I am bound for Ca-aliforna-y-ae  
_ _A place that I know right well…_

And ‘right’ becomes ‘reit’, and he draws out ‘California’ until it’s six or seven syllables, like Dad used to do when he sang it in the pub with his shipmates. He sings much too fast and a little off-key, and from somewhere in his beer-addled brain he finds the words of the chorus come just as naturally as the first verse did.

 _So fare thee well, my own true love,  
_ _And when I return, united we will be  
_ _It’s not the leaving of Liverpool that grieves me,  
_ _But my darling when I think of thee!_

At some point Tommy gives a delighted laugh when he realises Jonathan is singing along, just as off-key as he is, half the words missing but the melody mostly recognisable.

“ _Now the sun shines on the harbour, love, I wish that I could remain…_ How the hell do you even know that song?” he shouts, grinning like a fool.

Jonathan is tottering along with his eyes shut, singing at the top of his voice. It’s hard to tell who is leaning on the other more, him or Tommy.

“I don’t know!” he says gaily in the middle of a line. “Boat to Egypt, maybe? It’s a long, long voyage when we go there. _Days!_ ” His eyebrows climb and he goes a little cross-eyed as he adds, “And Evy… Evy _never_ gets sick. She reads _all_ the time and never feeds the fiss. Fish. Fishes. Wonder how she does it.”

“Who’s Evy?” Tommy asks, squinting at Jonathan as if it will make the words come out clearer. For all that Jonathan’s accent is usually fairly ‘public school’, right now he’s slurring his speech so much it’s hard to understand everything he says.

Jonathan beams.

“My sister! She is very, very smart. _Very_ bossy, though. You know,” he says conspiratorially, like he’s imparting a big secret, “I won’t be surprised if she ends up running the Bodleian. If they let her.” His face falls. “They probably won’t. But they should.”

“How old is she?”

“Just turned twelve!”

And the next second, while Tommy is trying to wrap his mind around the idea of a twelve year old girl running the most important research library in Oxford, Jonathan throws his head back and starts singing again.

 _For I know that it may be a long, long time  
_ _Till I see you again…_

So Tommy joins him for a rousing version of the chorus, until a furious voice shouts from one of the closed windows, “Shut up, you blasted hooligans, or I send for the police!”

Tommy and Jonathan look at one another and burst out laughing. They’re still giggling like the two drunk idiots they are when they reach the first-year undergraduates’ lodgings on Turl Street and somehow slip past the dozing porter.

“See you tomorrow,” says Jonathan. He claps a hand on Tommy’s shoulder that might have sent Tommy sprawling if he hadn’t been leaning on the wall and zigzags down the ground floor corridor. _Lucky bastard_ , thinks Tommy, who has two long flights of stairs to climb before he reaches his own room.

He remains where he is for a while, debating the chances he’ll make it without falling asleep on the way – there is a definite possibility of this – and trying not to let his eyes drift closed.

He fails. His eyelids can’t seem to stay up. Which is why he jumps out of his skin when a hand falls heavily on his shoulder.

“Why are you sleeping in the stairwell?” Jonathan asks, blinking slowly.

Tommy looks the stairs up and down and his chin falls on his chest. Sometimes the only thing you can do is admit defeat. He aims for a sigh that comes out more like a whimper.

“Me room’s too ‘igh. Can’t climb.”

“You can sleep in mine, ’s more comfy than the stairs. C’mon.”

Maybe Tommy was wrong about not making any real friends in this place after all.

This time it’s Jonathan who takes Tommy’s arm, and Tommy lets himself be steered down the corridor and into Jonathan’s room. They’re too drunk and sleepy to bother with modesty: coats and hats go on the hanger, jackets, waistcoats, trousers and shirts are draped on a couple of chairs, and finally Tommy collapses into the bed wearing only his drawers and socks, not even bothering to try unhooking his garters.

He vaguely hears clothes rustling as Jonathan changes into nightclothes. Then Jonathan slips into bed and says around a yawn, “’Night, Tommy.”

“Nfsl,” mutters Tommy, already half-asleep, and finally drops off.

* * *

When he wakes up the next morning, much too early, there is a fleeting moment of confusion as to why he’s is lying in an unfamiliar bed and has a splitting headache, a stomach that feels like a French revolution, and a warm tightness between his legs that tells him one portion of his anatomy is having a mildly pleasant time, at least. And then he hears Jonathan snoring steadily, just inches from him, and enough of the previous evening comes back for things to make sense again.

Tommy – warm, comfortable, and thoroughly hungover – silently thanks God and whoever is in charge of timetables that they don’t have classes this morning, and goes right back to sleep.

In hindsight, this is probably when his mind makes the shift from ‘Jonathan’ to ‘Jon’.

* * *

1Pronounced “Fanshaw” – or “Feesonhay”, “Festonhaw”, or “Firstonhaw”. It varies.

2A cheap, sensational/adventure novel.

3Also called the Great Famine. It killed about a million people in Ireland between 1845 and 1849.

4“Kiss my arse.”

5“a bunch of dogs”, in Black Country dialect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Old Rosie is a thing! The reason I picked the Turf all these years ago when I started to write _Fairy Tales and Hokum_ was because I went to that pub when I spent three days in Oxford in 2003. Didn’t see any ghost, though.
> 
> The UK’s ‘public schools’ might be called (logically) ‘private school’ in the US. The term means they’re one of the seven private schools given independence from direct jurisdiction by the Public Schools Act 1868: Charterhouse, Eton College, Harrow School, Rugby School, Shrewsbury School, Westminster School, and Winchester College. In my headcanon Jonathan went to Eton.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A garish flag – The Thames under Folly Bridge – The substitute laundress – Laws of attraction_

Studying in Oxford and studying in Oxford with a friend, Tommy finds, are two entirely different things. So far he’s alternated between classes and the Turf Tavern and spent a lot of his free time in his room; now, he and Jon share an armchair in the junior common room, swap books and cuffs, and on his evenings off they head to the pub – more often than not, the Oxford Arms1, a little pub on Bear Lane. It’s fairly close to their college, while just far enough from the Turf that nobody can mistake Tommy for the help. Not innocently, anyway.

In fact, studying with a friend actually involves a great deal of not studying. Tommy doesn’t mind, though. He’s keeping up in all his classes _and_ he’s having fun, for once – it’s the best of both worlds.

It’s even worth getting glared at by Edwin Farbow and his gang. From what Tommy can gather, Farbow, Bicky and Fanny keep searching for their wallets, impeded by the fact that they can’t set foot in the Turf to conduct a thorough search.

“Maybe they _should_ find them at some point, though,” he points out to Jon a week or so after the brawl. “Otherwise they might end up complainin’ to the proctors2, and we wouldn’t want that, would we? We might leave a couple in the common room for them to find.”

Jon nods. “Jolly good idea. Although,” he adds with something wicked that makes his eyes gleam, “I think Farbow is entitled to special treatment. How about we deliver his wallet directly to his room?”

Tommy, by nature, is not a vindictive lad. But Farbow’s words cut deep, and if the marks they left are not as obvious as the fading bruises and cuts, Tommy still feels them sometimes. Some measure of revenge is awfully tempting.

“Wouldn’t we need a key for that?”

Jon just grins.

Two hours later, they’re standing in front of Edwin Farbow’s room’s door, Tommy looking wildly between one end of the corridor and the other while Jon is fiddling with the lock.

“Would you hurry up?” he says over the sound of his heart hammering in his chest. If someone catches them…

Jon shushes him and keeps working, tongue slightly poking out from between his lips in concentration. Nothing seems to happen for three agonising seconds, then –

“Patience is a virtue,” says Jon sententiously, eyes twinkling, before opening the door and slipping inside.

Why and how Jonathan Carnahan learned to pick a lock is beyond Tommy, but the unexpected skill comes in handy. It only takes a minute to find a good place to hide Farbow’s wallet, but now that they are in the dragon’s lair, so to speak, it’s worth taking a look around.

Everything is elegant lines and rich textures: the chairs, the table, the tablecloth, the wallpaper. Underneath the quilt, the bedding looks like the finest silk – nothing like Tommy’s linen sheets, or even Jon’s, which are high-gradecotton. There are framed photos on the walls and on the mantelpiece, plus an elaborate clock and a couple of candlesticks. The candles look like they’ve never been lit at all.

It probably feels cosy to its owner, but the room would make Tommy feel like a trespasser even if he _had_ been invited in.

Rather like Farbow himself does, come to think of it.

Tommy’s hands curl into fists.

“Everything all right, old chap?”

Tommy jumps and turns to Jon, who is looking at him with something like slight worry. He swallows, and forces his fingers to relax.

“Yeah, just…” Hiding Farbow’s wallet to make him believe he simply forgot about it seems too… _nice_. There has to be something they can do to make Farbow feel at least a fraction of what Tommy was feeling as he stood behind the bar, not knowing whether he wanted to explode or dissolve into the floorboards. “We should do _something_ ,” he finishes lamely, with a vague gesture. “Put toothpaste into his slippers, maybe, or make him an apple-pie bed. But he deserves more than just the wallet thing. You know.”

Jon nods thoughtfully.

“I know.” Then his eyes light up. “Oh, wait, I _do_ know. Do you know Cherry?”

“Cherry-Reaney? Sure, why?”

George Cherry-Reaney is a tall, gangly lad in their year who has a few classes with them. He’s not part of Farbow’s usual crowd, but he’s barely said two words to Tommy since the beginning of term.

“Because,” says Jon as he walks to a chest of drawers and opens the top one, “it just so happens that he made a bet with Farnell.”

“What kind of bet?”

“That tonight, he would climb on the tower roof and replace the flag with something else.”

Tommy knows better than to ask why on earth someone would make a bet quite as mad. It’s actually rather tame compared to what he’s heard bandied about in the corridors and the common room. He refrains from shaking his head and smiles.

“And… what do you propose he uses, then?”

Jon closes the drawer and opens another. “Farbow’s subfusc3, maybe, or something embarrassing like his long underwear – what do you think?”

The more embarrassing, the better, whispers the part of Tommy that still wants to do more than emptying a steaming teacup on Farbow’s head. But then his eyes fall on the bed, the opulent quilt, and the richly decorated pillowcase which, he suspects, makes the pillow more a fashion statement than something to be slept on.

Edwin Farbow entertains members of his inner circle in his room sometimes. More people would recognise that pillowcase than they would a pair of altogether nondescript drawers, especially from the ground.

“I think,” Tommy says as he separates pillow from pillowcase, Jon’s curious eyes on him, “I have a better idea.”

* * *

“This was a _great_ idea, old chap.”

“ _Rather_ , old boy.”

Jon turns to Tommy, looking surprised, and for a moment Tommy is afraid his friend might think he’s being mocked. He’s not; it’s more of a gentle ribbing of the kind of fancy lingo Tommy’s heard since he set foot in the college.

Fortunately, Jon either trusts him or puts two and two together quickly enough; he chuckles, and it feels like they’re both laughing at the same thing. They return to staring up at the ‘flag’ flapping in the breeze, like the two dozen students currently milling about in the Front Quadrangle.

It’s not a bad sight. In fact, Tommy can’t decide which he prefers, this or Edwin Farbow looking near apoplectic.

Farbow doesn’t simmer down much all week. The fact that his pillowcase got ‘aired out’ as the college flag for twelve hours then confiscated by the dean spread around the undergraduates like wildfire. The best part is that picking up a fight with Cherry-Reaney about it is useless: Jon dropped the pillowcase in Cherry’s room as anonymously as he and Tommy retrieved it from Farbow’s, and the Cherry-Reaneys are a Good Family, landed gentry, higher on the class ladder than Farbow himself is. Thus both Tommy and Jon have a good laugh, like most of the first-years, and then move on to other matters.

Clearly, though, Farbow doesn’t, as evidenced by the way he, Fanny, Bicky, and Percy Barkley ambush Tommy and Jon on Folly Bridge one evening as they come back from a little pub on Brook Street.

“Fancy seeing you here,” says Farbow, and Tommy has seen enough sneers like this back home to know they aren’t there to exchange pleasantries. “Aren’t _you_ a long way from the Turf Tavern?”

Tommy stares right back even as he and Jon instinctively draw closer to one another. That posh twat is _not_ having the satisfaction of seeing him flinch if he can help it.

“It’s me day off,” he says, not even making the slightest effort to disguise his accent. If he’s going to get beaten up again with no Taylor to break up the fight this time, then he’ll be as aggressively Liverpudlian as he can. “Not that useless twits like you would understand the concept. I bet you’ve never ‘ad to work a single day in your life.”

Whether because of the insult or the accusation, anger flashes across Farbow’s face. Which is odd – not having to work is supposed to be a privilege of the idle rich.

Jon stuffs his hands into the pockets of his coat and sighs. The look on his face falls somewhere between half-hearted defiance and tired resignation.

“So. What can we expect, then? Queensberry rules or a regular four on two beating like last time? Are you going to be gentlemen about it, or just a bunch of thugs?”

“As fun as thrashing you two again would be,” Farbow says with a grin that makes it obvious he’s already won this round and knows it, “I have something rather different in mind.”

And he gives a jerk of his chin towards the parapet.

Tommy shoots a glance at the Thames running underneath. It’s dark, but he doesn’t need the light of day to know the river is muddy, cold, and might not be deep enough to jump into from this height safely.

Jon’s eyes go round with outrage.

“Are you mad? I’m not risking drowning or getting my head done in just because you like to order people about. Would you mind telling me why on earth we can’t all behave like civilised people and just go our separate ways?”

“Because,” growls Farbow, “you are an annoying little prick, Ferguson is a jumped-up oaf, and you both have delusions of grandeur that need rectified. And also because I’m fairly certain you both had a hand in what happened to my pillowcase. Correct?”

“You mean that thing really was yours?” says Jon airily, just as Tommy panics a little and says:

“What pillowcase?”

Jon turns a disbelieving stare at him. Tommy’s cheeks grow hot.

Bicky sniggers, Barkley shakes his head, and Farbow folds his arms across his chest. “Thank you for proving my point. Although, to answer your question, Carnahan,” he finishes with a disdainful curl of his lip, “the main reason you and Ferguson are ending up in the Thames tonight is because I feel like it.”

“Seriously?” Tommy shakes his head. “You want to push us off a –” he makes a quick assessment in his head “– a ten feet high bridge4 because you _feel like it_? I know you were a twat, Farbow, but that takes the bloody biscuit.”

Farbow’s face contorts with rage.

“What did you call _me_?” he snarls, leaping to seize Tommy by the lapels of his coat. The sudden weight throws Tommy off-balance; he grabs back blindly, and the momentum propels them both over the parapet.

In the next second or two – an eternity, if you’re suspended between the night sky and the river, both equally black – Tommy reflects that this is about the worst way to fall into a body of water, especially water he knows to be a little too shallow to jump into from a height. He barely has the time to push Farbow away and try to turn his body in mid-air, not unlike a cat, so he can fall feet first.

It doesn’t really work. Tommy hits the water with his back and shoulders. The impact – or the temperature, the Thames is much too cold to go for a swim in late October – knocks his breath clean away, and by the time he starts to recover his senses, the water has closed over his head and the lack of air is making his lungs burn.

At least he didn’t get brained against a pier of the bridge or the bottom of the river. That has to count for something.

Just as he’s starting to see bright spots and, admittedly, to panic – the bottom is mostly silt, making it impossible to kick properly, and his waterlogged clothes are dragging him down – Tommy finally finds the surface and breaks it with a gasp. He flails about for half a moment, spitting and snorting out muddy water, before a strangled voice behind him calls his name.

His first name.

Retroactive fear and relief hit him at the same time as he realises Jon either fell, jumped, or got pushed off the bridge, as well.

“—my! Are you all right? Tommy!”

“Yeah,” Tommy rasps, and he’s about to return the question when something heavy tugs him down, pulling him deeper.

“What the—” He sinks, kicks, and barely manages to get his face out of the water again. “Jon, let go, I can’t—”

“That’s not me,” he hears on his right, and wait, the weight is on his left _leg_ , which means –

Tommy takes a deep breath, dives, and when his hand finds purchase he grabs and _hauls_. Even once Jon lends a hand, muttering curses under his breath, lugging Farbow out of the water and onto the pontoon is no easy task. Of course, it doesn’t help either that when Farbow wakes up he starts thrashing about wildly and keeps pushing them under before his mates grab hold of him and drag him out.

At least Fanny holds out a hand for Tommy to grasp and hauls him, then Jon, onto the pontoon as well.

They’re all silent for a while as they try to recover the breath they lost, lying in two separate heaps of limbs: Farbow, Bicky, Fanny and Barkley on one side and Tommy and Jon on the other. Then Farbow asks, his voice low and hoarse, “Why did you two pull me out?”

Jon snorts. Tommy can see the top of his head on his chest, rising and falling to the rhythm of his own ragged breathing. His hair gets awfully curly when it’s wet, as it turns out.

“It was that or letting you drown him,” he wheezes. “Couldn’t have that.”

Farbow’s eyes seek Tommy’s, asking the same silent question. After a bit of thought, he sighs and replies, “I really don’t know.”

And that is the truth, as naked as it is complicated.

Silence follows his words, only broken by their panting and their teeth chattering, until Barkley nudges Bicky.

“Come on, let’s go.”

They pull Farbow – bedraggled, grimy, defeated, a far cry from the haughty bully the part of which he usually plays to perfection – to his feet. Farbow casts one last look at Tommy and Jon sprawled on the pontoon, gives them a nod, and lets his friends carry him off.

Tommy can’t help but be relieved he didn’t proffer his hand. Even if he does decide to finally be decent and leave them alone for the rest of their university years, the last thing Tommy wants is having to shake Edwin Farbow’s hand.

“We’ll send you the cleaners’ bill for our clothes,” Jon calls out as the little group makes its way back to the bridge, making Tommy laugh weakly.

Eventually he and Jon get to their feet, shivering with cold, each leaning heavily on the other, and Jon gives him an incredulous look.

“What was that?”

“What was what?”

“‘What pillowcase’? Really? The whole college talked about nothing else for a week!”

Tommy’s chuckle is a little bit sheepish.

“Come on, it wasn’t that bad, was it?”

“Oh yes it _was_ ,” says Jon with a little bit of a whine in his voice. “Tommy, you –” He shakes his head. “You may just be the worst liar I’ve ever seen. For God’s sake, even Evy does better, and she’s utterly, painfully honest.”

“Well, maybe I’m just bad at lying.” There’s no ‘maybe’ about it. Tommy is abysmal, and knows it.

Jon shakes his head.

“Listen, it’s simple. There’s always an element of truth at the heart of every good lie. For example, don’t say ‘It wasn’t me’ outright, but rather ask for more details, like it rings a bell but you’re not sure –”

They talk, they laugh, and somehow they hobble along on trembling legs for half a mile until they reach their college. It’s not until Tommy is tucked into his bed, hair still smelling like the bottom of the Thames but free of clothes caked with drying mud, that he realises he forgot to ask Jon how he ended up in the water, after all.

Ah, well. What matters isn’t how they got in, he reasons just before he falls asleep, but that they got out.

* * *

To Tommy’s relief, there remains just enough of their ill-gained money to cover the cleaners’ bill. When he and Jon go to drop off their suits at the usual shop – about the only thing they can still wear from the day before is their shoes, and then only because they spent a long time cleaning and polishing them inside and out – they are greeted by a new face.

“Is this laundry under new management, then?” Jon jokes. The girl behind the counter smiles.

“Mrs Brown hurt her foot yesterday. I’m taking care of the shop until she recovers. What can I do for you gentlemen?”

She has green eyes, a lively face framed by a mass of mousy hair, and she’s smiling at Tommy like they’re next-door neighbours and not perfect strangers. But for the Southern accent she could be a working girl like he knows back home.

For some reason Tommy feels a little self-conscious as he puts down the bags containing their stained clothes – jackets, trousers, waistcoats, ties, and shirts – in front of her on the counter. The girl peeks into one of them and her nose wrinkles.

“Blimey. What did you do, go for a swim in the Cher?”

“The Thames, actually,” says Tommy sheepishly. “Not that it was on purpose. Do you think you can get the stains off?”

“ _And_ the smell?” Jon chimes in.

The girl laughs.

“That’s nothing. We often get much worse with young gentlemen’s clothes. If you’d told me before I got here that Oxford would be so… challenging, I might not have believed you.”

She has bright eyes and an engaging smile, which might be what prompts Tommy to ask if he can help her with the bags – his and Jon’s and a couple of others – which she’s hefting into the backroom. When she accepts, he throws an apologetic glance back at Jon, who makes a ‘well go on, then!’ gesture with an amused look.

In the two minutes it takes to carry everything into the back of the shop, he learns that the girl’s name is Molly Goddard, that she’s worked for Mrs Brown for a year now, and that she used to be a maid in a big household but hopes to have her own laundry one day. She giggles when he calls her “Miss Goddard”, and he’s so deeply unsettled when she calls him “sir”, as if they wouldn’t have the same kind of accent if they hailed from the same town, that he gives her his first name and asks her to use it, _please_.

“I do think you made an impression on her, you know,” Jon says that evening, over pints. Well, his pint, because it’s a Turf night for Tommy and he never indulges while he works. It doesn’t stop Jon from regularlyparking himself on a stool at the bar and keeping him company until closing time.

Tommy looks up from the sink where he’s washing glasses, up to the elbows in suds and shirtsleeves rolled up high on his arms, and glances back at him curiously.

“Who?”

“The girl from the laundry. Don’t tell me you missed the way she was looking at you. Did you get her name?”

“It’s Molly,” says Tommy absently, “Molly Goddard. But I think she was just bein’ friendly.”

Jon laughs and puts his elbow on the counter to rest his chin in his palm.

“Believe me, old chap, if a girl had been so friendly with me I would _not_ leave things like this. At least when we go back for our clothes you’ll see I was right.”

“If you say so, Jon.” Tommy shakes his head with a smile and goes back to his washing-up.

The idea stays in his head throughout the evening, though, popping up occasionally. Molly did have a nice smile, and he’d like to see it again. So when he closes the Turf – after all the customers have gone, after he and Jon have had one last pint in the deserted pub, dark and quiet – he asks, uncertainly:

“You sure it was _me_ she was smilin’ at?”

Jon is a pint and a half over his limit. Not enough to make him sing sea shanties at the top of his lungs, but enough that he blinks owlishly at Tommy and says, “Who?”

“Molly,” Tommy clarifies. “From the laundry.”

His voice is thick, words blurring a little. He’s always exhausted on work nights. That last pint is probably not such a good idea, but it has become something of a tradition.

Jon’s eyes go round.

“Oh, yes! She was definitely smiling at you. Not me. I know when I’m being smiled at – that wasn’t it.”

Tommy grins. Perhaps it _was_ a good thing that they walked into that laundry when they did. He says so to Jon later as they stumble down the street arm in arm, and Jon grimaces.

“I could’ve done without the dip in the Thames, though. Bloody Farbow.”

“Edwin Farbow is a twat,” Tommy announces much too loud, because it feels important and deserves to be said. “But would _we_ be friends if he hadn’t been a twat?”

Jon’s mouth opens, closes, and opens again. Then he lets his head fall on Tommy’s shoulder with a grumbled sigh that sounds like “Mmffr”, making Tommy laugh.

When they get back to Turl Street, they both head straight for Jon’s room. It’s become a tradition: when the stairs are too daunting, when Tommy is either too tired, too drunk, or a little too much of both to attempt the climb to his room, they just totter to Jon’s by unspoken agreement and tumble into the bed, where they usually drop off right away and sleep like a couple of logs.

Sometimes they do talk a little before sleep hits them like a hammer. Those whispered conversations are short, disjointed, and rarely remembered in the light of day, when both of them are sober and more reluctant to discuss private matters. Tommy likes them anyway.

“Why _did_ you pull Farbow from the water?” Jon asks him when they’re both tucked into bed. He didn’t even bother with trying to put on his pyjamas this time and is still in his drawers, mostly drunk and more than half-asleep.

Tommy tries to blink, then remembers his eyes are closed. He opens them a fraction, tries to get his brain back in gear, and replies, “Dunno. Reflex.”

“He almost drowned you, though.”

“I know.”

“And he said the most awful things to you.”

“Yeah. Still.”

Jon is silent for a bit, then mutters, “Think _I_ might’ve let him drown.”

Tommy doesn’t know what to say to that any more than he knows exactly why he couldn’t let Farbow die without doing _something_ , so he says nothing.

After a while, Jon rolls on his side to face him, waits a little for the world to stop spinning, and asks, “What’d you say to him? In Irish. Before the tea.”

Tommy has to dig deep into the sludge his brain has turned into to find the answer to that question. When he has it, he smiles, and says, “Póg mo thóin. Means ‘kiss my arse’.”

Jon laughs silently.

“D’you speak Irish then?”

“Yeah. Me mum would ‘ave me hide if she knew I said that, though.” Tommy stops, hesitates. “Do you speak Arabic?”

“Hm-hm. Bit.”

“Like what?”

Jon’s eyes are mostly closed, but Tommy can still see him squint and go slightly cross-eyed as he thinks. He looks so tired his gaze falls short of Tommy’s eyes and settles on his mouth instead. When he murmurs something, there are no words Tommy can identify. It feels like a river, flowing smoothly in some places and hitting rocks in others, soft and guttural at the same time.

Tommy smiles into his pillow.

“Sounds nice. What does it mean?”

It must be a lot worse than ‘kiss my arse’, because Jon goes crimson and mumbles, “Not something to be said.”

This is where sleep claims them both, and Tommy has clean forgotten about it the next morning.

* * *

When they go retrieve their clothes from the laundry a couple of days later, Jon turns out to be right: the way Molly smiles at Tommy is definitely warmer and brighter than the way she smiles at Jon. They chat a little, and it’s harmless and light, but Tommy feels like something is missing. Neither Molly nor Jon appears to notice, but it’s like being in a room with two people talking in a language in which you understand maybe one word out of three. Yes, she’s pretty, and lively, and interesting, but isn’t he supposed to _want_ to kiss her?

From the look of things, _she_ might want to. He can feel her eyes on him even as he and Jon leave the shop and walk down the street.

“So,” Jon says with a twinkle in his eye, “that’s off to a promising start.”

“Don’t,” says Tommy, cheeks hotter than they have any business being on a brisk October afternoon. “Please.”

Thankfully, Jon not only complies, but also doesn’t pursue the matter further. Which is good, because Tommy doesn’t really want to have to explain how things work for him. Right now, for instance, while he wouldn’t mind seeing Molly again, he’s fairly sure there are _things_ any normal lad should be looking forward to that seem to be lacking in his case. He’s rarely felt the need to go after girls beyond a certain amount of curiosity – same with lads, although _that_ curiosity is a lot more dangerous. That fact is starting to bother him a little, because girls and the courting thereof is one of the prime subjects of conversation at hall. Even Jon has offered his own two cents on occasion.

But it’s hardly something you can bring up with a friend, is it? How would he open _that_ conversation with, anyway? _I’m rubbish at romance and I don’t even know if I want to hold Molly Goddard’s hand, let alone kiss her – got any tips?_

Mechanically speaking, everything seems to be in working order, at least, as evidenced by the few times Tommy wakes up in Jon’s bed after a late night at the Turf or a pint too many. Typically, when Tommy emerges from the murky waters of sleep the next morning with a furred tongue and a blinding headache, his body has a way to remind him that at least one part of him is alert and full of life despite the hangover.

It’s embarrassing, but it happens. When Tommy was a small child, too young to have heard the word ‘erection’ but old enough to have one and have questions about it, his dad told him it happens when a man feels good. Nothing ever contradicted this simple but accurate explanation. And waking up in a comfortable bed with a warm body inches from him, well – Tommy has to admit that does feel good. Especially as autumn fades into winter and mornings get cold when you forgot to restock the stove a couple of hours before bedtime.

He _is_ a little ashamed the one time he wakes up all snuggled against Jon, because apparently both reached for the other while they slept, and being tangled into each other’s warmth made them both very hard. Tommy delicately extricates himself from the embrace before Jon fully wakes up, and berates his stupid half-awake brain for remarking cheekily that Jon smells very nice – there’s always just a hint of jasmine to him that Tommy has never smelt on anyone else – and feels very nice, as well.

You simply don’t go noticing things like that about your best friend. It’s just Not Done.

* * *

And then, one evening just before they go to formal hall – a first for Tommy – they stop in the corridor to check their respective attires. Tommy’s dinner jacket is second-hand and he doesn’t get to air it much: formal hall is more expensive than informal hall, and the idea of dressing up for dinner makes him uneasy and even a bit nervous. It’s easy to dismiss the persistent feeling that he’s out of place, that he doesn’t belong, when he’s concentrating on a Greek translation or having a pint in a pub with Jon. It’s much more difficult when he’s surrounded by pristine dark suits and crisp white shirts on top of the usual stately stones.

Jon quips that he looks as foolish as anyone there, including himself, and takes a few seconds to fix Tommy’s crooked bow tie.

The world tilts.

Tommy still isn’t sure he wants to kiss Molly Goddard or not, but now he _knows_ he wants to kiss Jon. It rarely happens, but there’s no mistaking the warmth that surges through his chest and ends up in his cheeks, the way his heartbeat shifts to something a little louder, a little less regular. It feels like a magnet is pulling him towards Jon, urging him to lay a hand on his waist or brush a thumb across his cheek.

 _Oh no_ , Tommy thinks, alarmed, _not on your life_. In hindsight, the last few weeks have made him realise just how lonely he was before that fight in the Turf Tavern. Having a friend makes up for the hours sitting in cold classrooms or standing behind the bar serving drinks. These hours are always shorter when he and Jon chat about this and that and make ridiculous jokes. But all of this is likely to stop if Tommy even hints at wanting to kiss Jon.

Well. He won’t, then. Simple as that.

When he sees Molly a third time, he’s alone, and they stay well apart with the counter between them. The conversation is pleasant, Molly is easygoing and warm, yet still Tommy hesitates. Between someone he _wants_ to kiss but can’t and someone who wants to kiss him, which would be enjoyable and not against the law, making a choice should be fairly straightforward.

So why isn’t it?

* * *

1Which unlike the Turf Tavern is entirely fictional.

2Oxford University Police. There usually were a couple per college.

3Subfusc (from the Latin _subfuscus_ , “moderately dark”) is a gown, a kind of cross between a sleeveless jacket and a shawl. Oxford undergraduates’ version is short (it barely covers a suit jacket) and apparently colloquially known as an “arse-freezer” :P It’s worn over a suit, black or white tie, at occasions like formal hall or matriculating.

4Folly Bridge is actually ten feet and three inches high (3,12 m). And the Thames under it is nowhere deep enough for an adult to be out of their depth, since it’s 1,5m (under five feet). (I cheated.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _An evening at the Oxford Arms – A matter of technique – Who has danced and who hasn’t – Proving a point and what ensues_  
>  (NSFW)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this is the one chapter that warrants the rating. I thought of rating the story M for “mature”, but after a bit of pondering I prefer to make it obvious that this chapter has two lads taking their kit off and getting very enthusiastic with each other – especially since, having tagged it “Asexuality spectrum” (because Tommy, although he doesn’t know it, is greysexual, probably demisexual, and quite sex positive provided it’s with the right person) I don’t want to spring this on people who might search for stories featuring an ace character and no hanky-panky.
> 
> Anyway, hope you like!

It’s not that Tommy isn’t familiar with the racier side of things, so to speak. When he and his cousin Peg were thirteen years old, she asked him to kiss her – to see what all the fuss was about, she said. He’d been vaguely curious himself, so he’d said yes. The kiss had been quite chaste and so utterly unexciting that Tommy thought for a long time he was responsible for Cousin Peg turning out to prefer other girls.

There had been a bit of this and that later; Bonnie Crawford next door was more of a success, and if he learned later that her kissing him in the first place had been the result of a bet, they rather enjoyed their sloppy snogging and awkward fumbling while it lasted. In school, Davey Carragher had let him put his hand down his trousers, but it had been difficult to do anything interesting with Father Craig breathing down everyone’s neck as though the mere thought of doing anything remotely ‘impure’ would result in their hands – and various other bits – falling off.

Tommy’s father was a Protestant Scot, his mother is a Catholic Irishwoman. While he went to Catholic school and picked up interesting profanities there, in the end he chose the middle path of being mostly non-religious. But Father Craig’s fire and brimstone sermons endured the test of time.

Maybe it says something about him that Tommy’s most intense experience so far is walking back home one night after closing time, just before he left for Oxford, and accidentally witnessing a couple enjoying themselves in the dark alley behind the pub. The woman – dark hair, blazing dark eyes, and trembling mouth – had one hand wrapped around the man and the other down the front of his trousers, while her partner – strong nose, jawline that could cut glass, and a smile that lit up the night – pressed himself against her and slipped a hand under her skirts. They were almost completely silent except for a few quiet moans.

It should have been sordid. It should have been a shameful thing to do _and_ watch. But somehow it was the most beautiful thing Tommy had ever seen. He was hit by a wave of desire so powerful it left him sagging against the brick wall, breathing fast, hand pressed tight against the hard bulge in his trousers. By the time the wave crashed he had to run home, mortified and confused, and clean his drawers.

To this day, he has no idea which of these two people he was more aroused by.

This is a problem, he knows it. Tommy’s field of expertise might be ancient history, he knows the law, and he’s perfectly aware that a bloke can get convicted to a couple of years of hard labour at the very least and face lifelong scandal if caught with another bloke. So in a way, it’s a good thing that he’s never been very interested in the things that can lead down that sort of path – with a man _or_ a woman.

He has seen Molly once or twice, and things have not progressed any further except the last time, when he has laid his hand next to hers on the counter and their fingers have brushed, then laced together. It felt nice. Tommy vaguely wondered what it would feel like to kiss her then, but left it at that.

He hardly has the kind of _time_ to invest in any kind of relationship outside of school, though, not when the end of Michaelmas term1 is barely a month or so away. Lately, when he’s not in class, eating, sleeping, or serving drinks, he’s studying, often with Jon, despite his mate’s lackadaisical approach to schoolwork. After the library closes they generally retreat to the Oxford Arms and go over Latin translations and history books over pints.

Being friends with Jon has more than one benefit, and one of them includes occasionally getting a snug2 to themselves away from the ambient noise where they can spread books and papers everywhere on the table – except the spots already taken by the half dozen empty pints.

Some time before the eleven o’clock mark, between Plutarch’s _Life of Pericles_ and the architecture of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Jon stretches like a cat and asks, _à propos_ of nothing, “I say, where are things with you and Molly Goddard? I thought you’d be spending the evening with her by now.”

Tommy is stuck between an Ancient Greek dictionary and a translation he suspects doesn’t make much sense, so he barely thinks before he answers.

“En’t got around to even kissin’ her yet, actually.”

Jon’s eyes widen.

“For goodness’ sake, _why_? The girl’s been making eyes at you for weeks.” He squints at him. Jon’s very good at that. “You can’t be – I mean, you’ve –”

He stops, and Tommy almost laughs, because Jon isn’t usually the kind of lad who gets flustered about things like that.

“You _have_ … danced before, haven’t you?”

Tommy thinks of Bonnie Crawford, Davey Carragher, and a couple of other people. The list seems embarrassingly small, and he’s fairly sure it should only include individuals of the female persuasion. His cheeks grow warm. But Jon’s understatement makes him smile fondly.

“Yes, Jon, I’ve danced the dance, I know the steps.” _Mostly_. “I just… don’t really ‘ave time for this right now.” _There, nice and neutral_. “Besides –” _Oh no, bad move, mate, don’t let the beer talk_ – “I don’t think I’m very good at this whole thing, to tell the truth.” _Too late_.

Jon is still squinting at him, head tilted forwards and shoulders a little hunched, his mouth slightly open. Something stirs in Tommy’s stomach. He decides to put it down to the pickled eggs and the alcohol he’s been downing since they started their study session.

“I don’t believe that,” Jon says finally. Tommy shrugs.

“Believe what you want. I’m just better at theory than practice, I reckon. I have it on good authority that me technique is sort of rubbish.”

He’s got better since Cousin Peg, but Lord did he start out bad.

Jon makes a dismissive gesture. His hand flutters and his elbow comes dangerously close to knocking over an empty pint.

“I’m not talking about bloody _technique_ ,” he says, “although that helps. I’m – right, that’s it.”

He plonks himself on the seat inches from Tommy, who registers a jolt somewhere in his abdomen.

“Jon, what are you –”

“I’m proving a point. C’mere.”

Jon turns halfway towards Tommy, as far as the seat allows. Something like electric current goes through Tommy where their knees and thighs touch and he forgets to breathe. He feels a hand slide around his neck to the back of his head, play with the hair there which he’s forgotten to trim lately. Somewhere in the back of his mind, his brain helpfully reminds him that he likes Jon’s hands a lot – long, clever fingers, palms that are always warm.

Why the hell does he even let things like that register in the first place? It’s not like Jon has ever hinted at having an eye for anything but girls. Besides, he’s probably only joking –

And then Jon’s lips cover his, slowly, gently, leaving him plenty of opportunity to lean back and say no.

Tommy doesn’t.

Instead, he leans into the kiss, slowly at first, then more eagerly. He opens his mouth, wanting more, because Jon’s lips are not enough and he wants tongue, he wants the soft wet warmth and the taste of beer and crisps, the smell of cigarette smoke and cologne and the slightest whiff of jasmine he’s never smelt on anyone but Jon, and he wants –

He wants Jon.

Pure and simple.

The little voice in his mind murmuring about warm hands is abruptly replaced by another, a cold whisper like a snake’s hiss saying _This is wrong, this is so wrong – boys can kiss other boys, but men can’t kiss other men, and you – and Jon – and this is_ Jon _, for God’s sake, your friend, how_ can _you –_

For once, Tommy finds it easy not to listen. His brain has shut down anything that isn’t the sensory heaven he’s in right now. Heat goes through him like a fever, and suddenly he’s groping, pressing, caressing, his hands mapping Jon’s body under his waistcoat like the skin on them has replaced his eyes. He can feel Jon’s hands roaming over him, just as ardently as his own, forearms bared where he’s rolled up his sleeves.

The thought of bare skin on bare skin almost makes him see stars. His mouth leaves Jon’s and traces hungry kisses down his jaw, his neck, down the collar of his shirt, and still he wants _more_ –

…and so does Jon, from the small moan he gives as Tommy downright pushes him down and pins him against the seat. The sound somehow makes its way into his head; a sense of reality follows, and with it the fear of being seen, of being _caught_.

The snug is generally for the use of women or clergymen, for whom it’s not considered proper to be seen drinking in company. It has stained-glass windows and a lock on the door – which they didn’t close. Two lads studying for exams aren’t supposed to need a lock, anyway.

Right now, Tommy isn’t sure exactly what he wants, but he wants it, and he badly wishes they could have locked the door.

He opens eyes he doesn’t remember closing. Jon is lying underneath him, flushed, his hair in disarray, blue eyes half-open, staring up at Tommy as though he’s forgotten how words work. Through the layers of trousers and undergarments they’re both very, very hard.

Well. If Tommy had harboured any doubts that Jon has been enjoying this just as much as he has, they wouldn’t last long.

Beneath the haze of _want_ and the worry of getting spotted, there is a tiny voice cheering like they’ve won the Boat Race3, and singing out _You too!? You’re like me? You_ like _me?_

He’s still reluctant to speak, though. One word might break the charm. He’s especially wary of Jon’s reaction, because in his experience, just because a bloke enjoyed a bit of lip-locking with another bloke doesn’t mean he won’t violently shove him afterwards and tell him to go to hell.

But somewhere in Jon’s dazed eyes there’s a softness that makes this kind of reaction unlikely. Tommy wants nothing but to trust that softness. Besides, he’s starting to suspect that this is not Jon’s first kiss with another lad.

Jon blinks once, and grins his crooked grin.

“Your technique,” he declares, somewhat breathlessly, “is _not_ rubbish.”

Tommy, still propped up on his elbows, the tip of his nose right against Jon’s, can’t help a chuckle.

“I stand by what I said – I don’t usually dance well. Or at all, really. Maybe it’s the beer.” _Or the right dance partner_.

Jon makes a face. “Don’t be modest. The beer here isn’t _that_ good.” He blinks again, and says, “Want to take this elsewhere?”

“Oh God yes,” Tommy says fervently before he can stop himself.

Somehow, they disentangle their bodies and their limbs – Tommy immediately misses the heat that surged in the negative space between the two of them – and retrieve the books and papers scattered on the table. The walk from Bear Lane to the first-year undergraduates’ accommodations on Turl Street goes by in a flash, and when they are both in front of Jon’s room’s door, Tommy belatedly remembers leaving his copy of Plutarch’s _Pericles_ in the pub.

“Bugger Plutarch,” says Jon, and he takes his hand and leads him through the door.

Tommy likes Jon’s room. It’s light and airy, just like his own, but unlike his own it’s got photos and sketches on the walls of hieroglyphs carved in stone and faraway places, and unlike Tommy Jon can afford the extra coal when it’s cold outside. This is where they study when libraries and pubs are closed, where they crash on the bed when Tommy is too exhausted or drunk to find his way back to his own room, where he wakes up hungover and half-hard from the inviting warmth of Jon’s body right next to his. Nobody would blink an eye at his coming and going from this room at odd hours.

The bedsheets always smell a little bit like jasmine flowers when they’re fresh. How and why, Tommy has no idea, because generally all of their bedding are laundered the same way. Wherever it comes from, that faint scent has come to mean ‘Jon’ for him, just as much as the sound of his voice or the feel of his arm when they come out of the pub.

While Tommy has been standing there, looking around and wondering what comes next, Jon has turned the key in the lock and taken off his topcoat. He’s dressed like he usually is for the season, rather dapper in an offhand way, but his collar is askew and the carnation at his lapel is wilted and seriously ruffled by now.

“Um,” says Tommy awkwardly, “now what?”

Jon looks at him curiously.

“Well,” he says finally, absently taking Tommy’s coat and hanging it near his own like a good host, “I suppose I could put the kettle on. I know you left your _Pericles_ back in the pub, but I think I have a copy of the old bore’s biograph4 around here somew—”

Tommy decides to stop relying on his brain for action. Maybe it’s time to listen to his hands instead, and to the thing that feels like a hook in his belly, tugging him towards Jon. He cups his face between his hands and kisses him.

This time, he keeps his eyes open, and it’s Jon who closes his, long lashes dark against his skin. Tommy’s hands are as cold as Jon’s cheeks are warm and growing warmer still, but Jon doesn’t flinch away. In fact, from the look on his face, he doesn’t mind at all. His own hands are warm where they slide around Tommy’s sides and under his jacket, in the small of his back, and Tommy isn’t sure whether the wordless whine at the feel of cloth instead of skin comes from him or Jon.

And then Jon opens his eyes and murmurs, “No tea, then.”

“Maybe later,” says Tommy, and Jon kisses him again.

It’s a strange blend of new and familiar, because he _knows_ Jon – knows what he sounds like, what he smells like, what the feel of his arm under his jacket and shirt is like – but this is a wholly different experience. Jon’s breath is short against his mouth as he comes up for air; Tommy can feel, smell, and hear it, completely new. When Jon dives in again, there’s the slight scrape of teeth against Tommy’s lips, and if Tommy’s mind hadn’t already shut down it would be in a whirl right now.

He can safely say he’s never been more aroused in his life.

On impulse, he tugs Jon’s jacket from his shoulders, leaving him in his waistcoat and his shirt. Jon hasn’t even buttoned his sleeves before they left the pub; the fabric rolls back along his forearms as he reaches to divest Tommy of his own jacket, still intent on kissing Tommy as eagerly as he can. It’s a matter of seconds to let go of their jackets; the waistcoats take a little bit longer.

Tommy is used to Jon wearing the layers of clothing _de rigueur_ for a young man about town; while Jon isn’t particularly obsessed about fashion he’s usually fairly stylish. Tommy’s seen him in black tie a few times. Right now he looks a mess, all rumpled shirt, tousled dark hair, and braces dangling from either side of him, but Tommy thinks he’s bloody gorgeous.

Both shirts hit the floor just before their knees bump against the bed and they tumble into it.

At the first touch of Jon’s hand against his bare chest, Tommy gives such a shiver that Jon stops and gives him an enquiring look.

“Are you—”

“ _Yes_ , Jesus Christ, yes I am.” Tommy isn’t sure whether the question was ‘are you all right’, ‘are you sure’, or ‘are you ready’, but he’s all three – ardently so – and he wants more of that shiver. Jon grins, and his hands go back to Tommy’s torso.

“I usually go by ‘Jonathan’, you know.”

Tommy sniggers against his neck, because he might have known that Jon wouldn’t stop being ridiculous, even in a situation like this.

He’s right, too. Many of their classmates go by their initials or their last names when they don’t have absurd nicknames like ‘Bonzo’ or ‘Sippy’, but not so Jon. He does usually go by ‘Jonathan’. Only teachers – or people who either don’t know him well or don’t like him – call him ‘Carnahan’.

Tommy alone calls him ‘Jon’.

Their hands reach for each other’s trousers at the same time and meet halfway in a tangle, and despite the tension – or maybe because of it – they snort helplessly, giddily. There’s a part of Tommy that still can’t believe he’s getting away with this. Jon looks a little silly in just his drawers and his socks and garters, but oh God Tommy wants him, and he wants _all_ of him – narrow hips, lean muscles on long bones, and a body that a charitable soul might call ‘wiry’. In contrast, the same charitable soul might call Tommy ‘stout’ when in truth he knows he’s just plump. The flesh of his stomach yields where it’s pressed against Jon’s.

Off go the socks and the garters, Jon tosses his drawers over his shoulder, and suddenly they’re both stark naked. Tommy swallows a little, because he _wants_ – oh Lord, does he want – but in a way he’s never come so far with anyone. There has been fondling on occasion, and caressing, and pleasuring, but he’s never found himself starkers in bed with someone else before. There’s always been at least an item of clothing or two and a measure of urgency, of pressing time, of threat of discovery, or fear of impropriety.

There is none of that here. There is only a bed, still unmade from the night before, a locked door between them and the outside world, and Jon. Jon who stills and stares him up and down, like he likes what he’s seeing – a lot.

This, too, is a wholly unusual sensation.

“‘Good authority’ my arse,” he says with a grin. “The idiots didn’t know what they were missing.”

And then he climbs on top of Tommy and presses the full length of his body against him.

And it feels – _oh sweet Mary mother of God_ – it feels incredible.

There is nothing between them – no shirt, no trousers, no undergarments, not even air. The heat is unbelievable; it’s the first time Tommy has felt so much hotter with his clothes off rather than on. The familiar pressure is building in his lower belly as it has been since Jon kissed him in the pub earlier, spreading downwards and outwards, making his heart thump in anatomically improbable places – his stomach, his throat, the centre of his chest. It would be almost painful if it wasn’t so bloody marvellous.

Jon’s mouth moves from his lips to his neck, his collarbone, his chest, and he wraps the hand he isn’t using to prop himself up with around both their pricks.

This time, Tommy does see stars, and wonders if it’s possible to die from pleasure. His whole body is on fire, especially his head, which feels increasingly like it’s about to shoot up into space; he is trembling from head to toe, one hand tangled into Jon’s hair and the other grasping his back even as air gets squeezed out from his lungs. Jon may be a skinny lad, he’s not small, and the weight of him crushed against Tommy is making it harder to breathe – unless it’s the feel of skin on skin, the taste of sweat, small hairs being pulled and tangled and twisted, and the sweet, unbearable friction growing stronger and stronger and threatening to make him explode.

“Jon,” he stammers, because it’s that or howling and the walls aren’t that thick, “oh Jesus fucking Christ, Jon –”

Jon’s head is buried in his neck and his answer is too muffled to be intelligible. On instinct, Tommy shifts to the juncture between his neck and his shoulder and presses his mouth there, sucking, licking, then _biting_. Jon lets out a sound somewhere between a strangled sigh and a yelp; his hand twitches, his whole body spasms, and Tommy’s world goes white. He cries out against Jon’s shoulder, his breath rushing out of his lungs, still clutching Jon’s back as though it’s the only thing that will keep him grounded in reality. Maybe it is.

Thank goodness he’s lying down. His limbs are a curious mix of floppy as jelly and heavy as stone. His ears are ringing and he feels as though he leapt off the world and is now floating around in the stratosphere.

It’s never been like this with anyone, he realises. Never as intense, not as delicious, and – dare he say it – definitely nowhere near as fun.

Is that how it’s supposed to be?

Tommy eases up his embrace and Jon rolls off him; he’s bright red from the hairline to the throat and down. Their chests are heaving and despite the sticky mess over their stomachs they’re both grinning the biggest, silliest grins.

Oh, God. He _has_ been missing out before. This was bloody fantastic.

As Tommy’s mind gradually drifts back down to earth, he wonders at the unprecedented passion that seized him. It’s still there, faintly, like an echo of the heat that pooled in his stomach at the thought of kissing Jon, touching him, holding him, _marking_ him even – that’s definitely a love bite on Jon’s neck, thankfully low enough to hide behind a collar. It’s whispering that there’s even more of Jon to explore, that Tommy wants more of his body against him, _around_ him…

… _oh_.

They have just committed a criminal offence; a tribunal would deem it ‘gross indecency’, which is a conveniently vague term for anything even slightly more scandalous than hand-holding, and send them away for two years. Tommy should feel bad about that. Instead, he’s happily considering breaking yet another law. The idea of doing _that_ with Jon, _to_ Jon, the mental images it conjures would probably make him hard again if he wasn’t so thoroughly knackered. Even the perspective of spending the rest of his days in prison if discovered doesn’t seem quite so bad.

He’s likely to go to hell for this. But he’ll deal with that later, as well.

Right now, the one thing that’s beginning to sneak through the blissful haze Tommy is floating in is a low-key kind of anxiety about the near future. Because, even as he allows himself to realise he has been wanting to kiss Jon for a long time, he likes having him as a friend. He likes their friendship, the way they can laugh at each other, rely on each other. They’ve had an easy rapport since they met and he doesn’t want that to change, let alone to end. What if Jon no longer wants to be his friend after this?

He rolls his head to the side to see Jon, still panting just as hard as he is, look at him with a grin.

“So,” he says, and Tommy knows him enough by now to know that whatever will follow will inevitably be something idiotic, “when _are_ you going to kiss Molly Goddard?”

Tommy tugs the sole pillow from under their heads and hits Jon in the face with it.

All right, so maybe some things won’t change that much, after all.

They take turns cleaning themselves up with a wet cloth and hurriedly climb back into the bed without bothering with nightclothes. It’s not very warm in the room, something that’s escaped Tommy’s notice so far somehow; the stove ran out of coal well before they got back from the pub and Jon forgot to restock it. It happens.

Tommy, whose day began at five and a half in the morning, is so exhausted – in a profoundly different, so much better way than he usually is – that he falls asleep right there and then, curled up against Jon, one arm thrown around him, his feet between his calves.

And sleeps the best he has in ages.

* * *

The next morning, Tommy wakes up five minutes before the alarm clock goes off.

He spends a very confusing couple of seconds trying to untangle the jumble of unfamiliar sounds, smells and sensations before last night’s memories come back and make him grin like an idiot, cheeks aflame. He and Jon are still wrapped up around each other, bare skin to bare skin, and he can feel Jon’s deep breathing against his neck and his hipbone poking the top of his thigh. Not that Tommy really needed confirmation – he and Jon have rowing practice together, which means they’ve already seen a lot of each other in the changing room – but after last night he knows Jon really is as skinny as he looks everywhere, all sharp elbows and pointy knees. One of his legs is draped across Tommy’s thighs. It will probably feel less wonderful once Tommy’s bladder wakes up, but for now, he just enjoys the warm body in his arms and the combined memories of Jon’s laughing eyes and the sharp hot pleasure they brought one another.

Honestly, he can’t wait to try again.

Just as Jon makes a sleepy sound and burrows closer, sending little thrills of desire curling through Tommy, the alarm clock rings shrilly. Tommy yelps and jumps so badly he almost throws Jon off his own bed.

They have classes and no time for further mutual exploration right now.

But they will. Much as Tommy is used to dancing alone, he has a feeling Jon is going to be a fun partner.

All in all, disagreeable classmates and difficult schoolwork aside, Tommy Ferguson is wholeheartedly looking forward to the rest of his first year in Oxford.

THE END

(to be continued in _Pas de deux_ )

* * *

11st term of the year in Oxford, from September to Christmas. (ends on 18th December.) In Oxford the terms go thus: Michaelmas, Hilary, and Trinity.

2A small, comfortable (private) backroom in a pub.

3Every Oxford college has a rowing team, but “The Boat Race” is against Cambridge. BIG event. Basically the two uni towns have been rivals for centuries.

4Biography, informal – the 1910s version of “bio”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew :D Confession time: this is the very first thing I’ve ever written where two characters (male/male, female/male, or female/female) explicitly do more than kiss each other. I’d played around briefly with the concept of two people in a bedroom before, but it was a lot less straightforward. Hope I didn’t do too badly for a first time.
> 
> I’ll post the next story on Friday, and try to stick to one chapter per week! It (mostly) picks up where this one left off, only it’s with Jonathan’s POV, which turned out to be very interesting, too – if only to see how he goes from “fooling around with my best friend is really great” to “...wait, I actually love him?!” :D
> 
> See you on Friday?


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